Misys Banking Systems is pleased to announce that Banque Federale Mutualiste, the French bank, has selected the Misys Basel II solution. This is an extension to their existing ALM capabilities solution, the Misys Almonde platform.

After a formal selection process with several risk vendors, Banque Federale Mutualiste chose the Misys Basel II system. The strong Misys track record in such projects meant that the bank could be sure that it will achieve Basel II compliance under the standardised approach within the project deadlines.

Pierre Emmanuel Valentin, CEO and Board Member of Banque Federale Mutualiste says, "We selected the Misys platform because it will enable Banque Federale Mutualiste to benefit from Basel II by enhancing our capital allocation and our risk steering. But also, this system means that we will have a common platform between the Misys Basel II and ALM solutions. That means that we can re-use a lot of the data acquisition work that was done for the Misys ALM implementation, so project risk and implementation time are both dramatically reduced."

Marco Knaap, Director of Sales, Risk Management of Misys Banking Systems says, "The benefit of our common platform will enable Banque Federale Mutualiste to get ahead of the competition for regulatory compliance.We're thrilled to be able to extend our partnership with Banque Federale Mutualiste to include our Basel II solution. We see this as another strong vote of confidence in our products and our services from an existing and valued customer."

Separately, Misys Banking Systems has gone live with the leading New Product Development solution from Computer Associates (CA), Clarity, which will be rolled out to 2,000 users worldwide.

CA's Clarity is part of a company-wide programme to accelerate the development times of the Misys banking systems software portfolio. The solution will allow Misys to streamline and more effectively manage the entire new product development process – from original idea through to delivery.

Misys Banking Systems is currently making a significant investment into the development of its banking systems software portfolio. In order to create and sustain its lead in the market, Misys has hired over 100 developers in the UK, the Philippines and India and is looking to set industry-leading standards by using Clarity to boost performance and drive efficiencies.

The Clarity system will help Misys Banking Systems enhance software development by:

Automating and standardising processes to accelerate planning, resourcing and reporting, enabling Misys Banking Systems to deliver new products and client services to market quickly and cost-effectively

Streamlining interaction across the company by facilitating a "common language" to describe project tasks and milestones, helping to ensure that requirements are clearly and accurately communicated

Providing a comprehensive dash-board of all client projects and resources across the business, which will facilitate fast, informed decision-making and accurate forecasting to improve management consistency, visibility and control

"We want to challenge the accepted wisdom that development is slow, costly and riddled with inefficiencies – we want to raise the bar," said Jerry Luckett, Director of Product Management for Wholesale Banking at Misys Banking Systems. "To get the best results you need the best people and the right technology. We have over 1,050 developers in place and now, using Clarity, we can get them working together, wherever they are based, to build the best banking systems software on the market. Misys Healthcare Systems in the US already uses Clarity and we are now taking it on in the UK to support us with anything from product development, project portfolio management and resource planning to expense capture and skills management."

Luckett continued, "We were looking for an integrated and versatile solution to replace a variety of manual processes and stand-alone point tools - it was the only enterprise based solution that could help us do this."

"Delivering new products to market on time and on budget is critical to global software organisations such as Misys. We are pleased that Misys Banking Systems has selected the Clarity system to manage its product strategy and oversee and track the flow of initiatives from opportunity to implementation," said Josh Pickus, senior vice president of the Clarity Division, Business Service Optimization (BSO) at CA. "Clarity will provide Misys Banking Systems with a holistic view of all projects, resources and cost; workflow-driven support for phase gate processes; and visibility of the audit trail and sign-off between decision phases. This will be a rich, global implementation that will help Misys Banking Systems extend its market leadership by driving innovation and delivering new products faster."